


Who Is More Fatigued?

by ettie



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Alternate Ending, Character Death, M/M, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-04
Updated: 2013-06-04
Packaged: 2017-12-14 00:05:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/830397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ettie/pseuds/ettie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Why are you here, Katsuragi-san?”</p><p>Misato didn’t aim her gun at the boy because it was practical. She aimed her gun at the boy because it was an excuse; an excuse to be here in the first place. Self preservation, leading on the edge of a serrated knife, it had all come so easily to her, hadn’t it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who Is More Fatigued?

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fanfiction attempt completed in accordance to a prompt my friend gave. I hope it's enjoyable!

It was funny how so much could change in two days. God knows it felt longer. Really, she should have been more prepared. As NERV’s captain (and NERV’s _best_  captain until the events of the last two days severed her credibility), she was painfully aware that worst-case-scenarios were every day threats. Since she became Shinji and Asuka’s guardian, Misato foreshadowed the deaths of mere children in her dreams, staining her blankets with sweat night after night. She hated herself for it. With each vision, her bed smelled more and more like rationed beer and weakness…

She could not let herself think those kids would die. Eons ago, that would have meant giving up. And yet…

It was real time, and real time was cruel, wrought with a stagnant summer breeze and Misato’s ever-constant reminder of her most recent, personal failure, the boy before her.

Misato grit her teeth. Her finger trembled toward the trigger. “Don’t ask stupid questions.” 

The boy, no, the  _Angel_ had his back turned, hands in his pockets. The gesture was so lethargic and cavalier that Misato felt a sudden impulse to tear his fingernails off, one by one. At the very least, their location justified that torture. Tokyo III’s graveyard was burdened with the many dead, and though Misato did not believe in ghosts, she suspected that if they existed, they would remember the Second Impact and all the Angels since, the very creatures that had ended the majority of their existences. But at least the spirits had survived the fallout of Rei’s battle with Armisael…the graveyard was one of the only plots of land that remained untouched.

Her stomach curled with venom at the thought. She was so damn sick of  _irony_.

And Tabris? He stood at the edge of Shinji Ikari’s newly dug grave, neutral to her existence, to anyone’s existence. Misato remembered how quickly Shinji was buried, swept away to become a remnant of grief - she hated it. He was not given a proper funeral; the circumstances of his death would not allow that. She loathed the fact, but Misato could not afford revealing to the United Nations and SEELE that they had been severed of two pilots in only a handful of weeks. Gendo Ikari was already under examination for his stunt with the Lance of Longinus; at this rate they would lose their autonomy.

Shinji’s stone was lopsided, his name written in hasty kanji. A small, sick afterward to a painful childhood. There was no testament to his life, no, “beloved son,” or “beloved friend”. He was merely himself - a wasted existence…

“My question was not without meaning,” Tabris replied, motionless. He could have been mistaken for a grave.

_Still refuse to face me, eh? You’re weak Adam._

“I can’t read minds, Angel,” she snapped, spitting the last word. And it might have been her imagination, but she thought she saw the boy’s posture slump…oh, it was  _definitely_  her imagination. She scowled.

“Katsuragi-san…Rei Ayanami and the rest of NERV’s forces have pursued me since Shinji’s death. Naturally you would keep Adam and Lilith under the highest possibly scrutiny since you discovered who I am. Yet NERV has failed to locate me for almost two days.”

“…only you, Katsuragi-san, could imagine that I would be here. Why?”

Misato’s mouth opened and closed. She dug her heels into the grass.  _Don’t lose it now._

“Instinct.”

A laugh erupted from the boy and Misato flinched. “You…!” she growled. The silver-haired youth became more and more of a sliver as she drew closer, an optical illusion that turned when she was close enough to touch him. Her breath hitched. Though confidence graced the features of the boy’s iridescent alien face, Tabris’ eyes were only…holes. Deep red holes that lacked focus or thought or strength or anything whatsoever.

“…I apologize that I have brought you pain, Katsuragi-san,” he said, wrapping those _damn_  hands behind his back… ”But,” he continued, “you are here because you have honored Lilin sentiment in me. You think I can mourn. And for that…I thank you. I was not expecting that mercy.”

Tabris looked up. Smiled again.

Misato grabbed the crook of his shirt. She pushed the gun into the soft of his stomach, and the child looked up, questioning. She knew that he knew that  _she_  knew about his AT field and she knew that he knew that this was the only bluff she could afford. She was as powerless as Shinji at the hands of…

“You’re all talk,” Misato hissed. 

“Ah, but so are you,” Tabris whispered. “So are you.”

Tabris’ hand rest across the surface of Misato’s gun, gently removing it from his abdomen. Misato wasn’t sure why she let him. She had a  _job_  to do…!

“I would not mind if you shot me. I probably deserve it for this world,” the boy mused, eyes to the cloudless sky. “And I will return regardless.”

Though she tried not to notice, Misato saw tracks of thick, red, accusatory lines cross his wrists like chains over and over, so jarring against the metal of her gun…

“When I learned that Shinji wished for my return, unintentionally creating this infinite loop, I have tried to grant Shinji happiness. Yet each world has changed since. Slowly at first, with subtle changes. Now, I can predict nothing.”

“…once Shinji was incapacitated by the fifteenth Angel, Arael. There was nothing I could have done to ease the grief he suffered. Asuka Soryu replaced his role, and I was destroyed at her hand.”

The image of Asuka, blazing Asuka, doll-like, strapped to the cot Asuka, flashed before Misato’s eyes. She protested, his story was so ridiculous….she couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t  _let_  herself believe it.

“You’re wrong, Asuka’s-“

“In another world,” Tabris interjected. “Shinji was groomed to become a pilot since birth. His attitude and experiences were changed astronomically at the surface, but…he really was the Shinji I knew.” Tabris shook his head, his expression bitter. “Shinji’s pain, my need for Adam, those are the only constants in any of the worlds I return to. I have tried so long to change those constants…and that is why you and I are here, Misato.”

Water stung Misato’s eyes to blindness. The tombstones around them blurred to grey, grey in Tabris’ windswept hair, grey in her misery and the color of corpses…

“No,” she said. ”No.  _We’re not the same._ ”

Misato jerked Tabris’ wounded hand away and pushed the revolver into his shirt. She grabbed his arm before he could stagger backward and away, her entire fist imprisoning his straw-like arm. She pulled the trigger.

It was too easy. It _worked_.

Red pooled at the center of Tabris’ shirt and past the faded cotton. He sunk to the ground with a light thud and bent forward, his eyes mute and unsurprised. His palms stretched across the dirt. “Ngh…”

Misato’s gun drooped in her fingers.

“Why…why did you let me…”

“…Katsuragi-san…I already said I would.” Tabris smiled weakly, rolling to his side. “Ah…I’ve never been shot by a Lilin before. But I almost was, wasn’t I?”

How long had Misato and Makoto Hyugu researched this boy? For days, they poured over as much hacked information as they could, debating, coming to their own hypotheses between coffees and computer monitors. They had reached a conclusion, that the Fifth Child, Kaworu Nagisa, was the seventeenth, cursed, Angel. It was a guess, but as long as they could act on it in advance…perhaps they could eliminate the problem before it festered. Before it cost lives.

They knew Kaworu was residing within NERV’s headquarters, living in a standard bunk, as plain as it was when it was first left to him. For obvious reasons an Evangelion would not be able to fight in a hallway sized for humans. They would have to take Kaworu into custody first. It was risky, but what choice did they have? For all they knew he could have been planning an attack overnight. The Angels were bloodthirsty, surely, Kaworu would attack NERV at its weakest…

They had no way of knowing that Shinji and Kaworu had befriended each other until three soldiers infiltrated their room that evening. They found Shinji and Kaworu sitting in the dark, tethered to the same bed. They spoke in whispers, blankets around their frames like ghosts…

Everything after that was unclear, dependent on the nervous accounts of soldiers that now risked life imprisonment. They had asked Kaworu to come with them, peacefully. Standard protocol, interrogation, please-we-mean-no-harm, what did they say, exactly? Their memories were awfully inconvenient. Shinji protested.  _“But why Kaworu?”_ he asked. And Kaworu had every reason to suspect violence. He activated his AT field, floating, no, hanging in the air. And Shinji, he was stunned, wasn’t he? 

It might have been too much.

There was confusion between the boys - should Shinji have stayed, should he have gone, should he have fought. Kaworu tried to knock the guards away - lightly, they said, as if the Angel had no intention of hurting them after all - but a careless guard, under the duress of the situation, fired his gun at Kaworu…

The ricochet from the AT field hit Shinji twice.

“Kaworu’s eyes changed,” they said stupidly, limply, in their interrogation chairs. The soldiers were cast toward the walls, any pretense of peace evaporated. They lived despite their injuries - two broken legs, a broken neck, bruises, cuts, a punctured lung. The soldiers swore they heard a yell, and the last image they saw was Kaworu and Shinji’s escape, the young Angel clutching his friend with too-lean arms…

Shinji’s body was left to NERV the afternoon after. A coroner said there was nothing Kaworu or anyone could have done to treat the wounds he sustained. 

First Kaji, then Asuka, and now Shinji… _Shinji_ …who was trying so much…

Misato fired her gun at the boy until the cartridge was empty. The noise split the air and Tabris’ calm as he gasped in pain, his body twisting grossly with each hit, so well directed, never aiming for his head. Only his chest, his legs, his arms, anywhere that could sustain his life for a handful of painful hours.

The Angel’s eyes shut tightly, his hands reaching for his head, as if his pretty fingers could somehow protect him. It was such an ugly feeling, but Misato couldn’t help but…rejoice in the boy’s discomfort. 

She  _needed_  this.

“…that’s it.” Misato sighed. She thought of her father, the ceiling of her metal life raft, the years without her voice. Tabris’ birth had destroyed her parent, along with many aspects of herself. And now…

“It’s over.”

Misato returned the gun to her holster. All she had to do was walk away.

“How…like a…Lilin.”

Misato looked at him sharply over her shoulder. Blood dripped from the corner of Tabris’ mouth to his chin as he shook. The color was deep, a shade darker than crimson, but from afar…it really could have been human blood.

“You’re the only one at fault,  _Tabris_.”

Tabris nodded tightly, red eyes wide atop his wan face. Yet something was…off. Was that…singing?

No. It may have been a melody, but it was more of a  _vibration_. Something familiar, something she couldn’t peg.

“What?” Misato asked. He said nothing. ”What!? What _is it-“_

She gasped. A lined yellow light, an unmistakable Absolute Terror Field, braced itself around Tabris’ own neck and head, humming softly in the air like praying. They met each other’s eyes. Misato ran toward him. 

As soon as her foot touched the dirt, the AT field sliced the child’s neck and head underfoot. All that was left was piecemeal, a decapitated nothing. Misato staggered. Bile rose in her throat. The body, with the clothes it bore, it was as if she’d killed Shinji all over again…

She sunk to her knees, tears making her cheeks sticky, wet,  _ugly_. Her fingers clenched the dirt as she choked back sobs. ”Such an idiot…”

___________________________________________________

In a space between worlds, Kaworu Nagisa flew, stroking his wrist as the scars of his past life smoothed away. His feet touched a mass of energy and starlight beneath him, the dust of the cosmos Kaworu never tired of in all his incarnations. 

It was peaceful. He supposed this was how Lilin felt within the wombs of their mothers.

Kaworu acknowledged Misato Katsuragi in his thoughts. Perhaps it was selfish of him to have not granted the captain relief. Still, to have let that torture continue…he could only endure so much before it was unjustifiable masochism. 

Kaworu closed his eyes. 

Remembering.

All his lives. All his missed opportunities.

All his failures.

Kaworu ran with Shinji because he panicked. That was his mistake. He could have left him at NERV; perhaps Shinji would have been treated  after all. Still, Kaworu could not have known that it was his own AT field that resulted in Shinji’s death until later, overanalyzing everything that went wrong in the accusatory light of the moon. Only then did Kaworu acknowledge that in a crisis, he became fixed, no longer an all powerful Angel but a weaker, more human entity that couldn’t even handle a diversion from his plans.

If his shortcomings had not pained him before, they wrecked him as Kaworu held Shinji in the crook of his arm, soaring away from NERV and over the crater that was once Tokyo III. Shini looked up, wincing, whispering…

“K-Kaworu-kun…it can’t be true…if you…you can fly, are you really….”

_An Angel._

Kaworu didn’t mean for his smile to be so cruel - but it was. Cruel and wrought with the self-hatred Shinji didn’t need to see; he looked up to him so much…

Shinji blinked. 

“But…I don’t understand, Kaworu. You saved me from the soldiers!”

The Angel said nothing, except he slowed, drifting downward toward the distant forest. If they could find a place to rest, perhaps they could stop the bleeding in time. Yet they were already covered with so much red…

“Kaworu… _please,_   _answer me!_ ”

He stopped. Shinji was determined all over again, his fists clenched, his brown eyes shining.

“Shinji?”

“You’re not bad. You can’t be bad, Kaworu. I-if you’re an Angel, you’re not  _like_  them…”

 _Ah._  The faith of Lilin endured.

Kaworu brought his sleeve to rub his eyes. Everything in his face stung.

“Kaworu…? Are you-?”

“Shinji. I’m sorry, but we need to find a hiding place.” Kaworu clung to Shinji’s skin and clothes. “Let me know if this is in any way uncomfortable.”

He bled out by early morning. All the while, Kaworu kept his hands pressed across Shinji’s chest despite his outlook, Shinji’s hands limply splayed across Kaworu’s skin as if to help him weakly, as if he felt that he needed to apologize for an inconvenience that was only Kaworu’s.

 _Th_ _is was all his fault_. If only Kaworu had medical knowledge…! Though Kaworu greatly respected Lilin healers, the practical application of the biological sciences was a subject he had missed in his lifetimes. That would soon change, he would know everything, next time, and if that didn’t work, he’d know more for the time after that, and the time after that…

_Shinj…_

Even dying, Shinji’s skin was soft, his expression hopeful amidst the depression and loss…

Kaworu’s hands began to quiver.

“I…couldn’t protect you this time either…Shinji…”

“K-Kaworu-kun…” Shinji tried to raise his chin, yet it was useless, he had no energy, and…was Shinji frowning for  _him_? No, that was unacceptable. 

“Shinji, don’t-“

“No,  _you_  don’t!”

Alarmed by the tenacity of his own voice, Shinji thinned his next words. “I-I mean…Kaworu-kun, please don’t worry about me. I’ll…I’ll be okay no matter what. Right? I think…we stopped most of the blood…”

Kaworu stared at him. He lifted his hands from Shinji’s chest slowly, and lay beside him. Shinji tried to roll over, to meet Kaworu, and he was stopped only by the gentle push Kaworu gave Shinji’s shoulder.

“Yes, of course.”

Shinji turned away, embarrassed. “And at least I’m not alone here. So…thank you for being with me, Kaworu-kun.”

Kaworu forced himself to smile. “Shinji, you’ll never be alone. I promise.”

“R-really?” Shinji whispered. Kaworu brushed away some hair that clung to Shinji’s face. 

“I told you I loved you.” Kaworu remembered Shinji’s blushing face in the bath. His smile was suddenly more genuine. “I love you, and all Lilin, but…you most of all. I only wish for your happiness, Shinji.”

“I…I see.”

Shinji tried to lift himself; Kaworu held him in place. A rare breeze flit through the air, musical in its own way……oh, how Kaworu wished they had played together in this life…

“You shouldn’t strain yourself.”

“But Kaworu! I wanted to say all this time that I-“ 

Shinji began to cough, his face pale. His hand draped to his side, slowly beginning to reach Kaworu’s own hand; a gesture unique to this lifetime. Kaworu tilted his head. He gingerly touched Shinji’s fingers.  
  
“…Shinji, are you-“

“…Shinji?”

There was nothing left.

_What was he trying to say?_

Kaworu snapped his hand back and brought his legs to his chest, holding himself with failing energy. He buried his face in his knees, Shinji’s unmistakably dead expression etched forever in his mind, the one he so feared. He strangled his voice to keep from screaming, from damning  _everything and everyone that had taken him away_ …

Kaworu was supposed to love this Lilin world, yet it was so cruel...when would it stop?

___________________________________________________

Far away, Kaworu’s eyes opened.

_Will you keep trying?_

Kaworu hesitated.

Remembering pianos and first encounters and baths and the conversations he’d overheard between Shinji and Rei and Asuka and everyone Shinji cared for and all the Lilin and Shinji’s smiles and the way he held his hand, he who was worried that Kaworu of all people would be lonely…

With tired optimism, Kaworu turned to the next world.


End file.
